Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Law of Mechanical Repair After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch or you'll have to pee.

Law of the Workshop Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Law of Probability The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

Law of the Telephone If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

Law of the Alibi If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

Variation Law If you change lines (or traffic lanes) the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

Law of the Bath When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

Law of Close Encounters The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone with whom you don't want to be seen.

Law of the Result Law of Biomechanics The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

Law of the Theater At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last.

Law of Coffee As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Murphy's Law of Lockers If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

Law of Rugs/Carpets The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet/rug.

Law of Location No matter where you go, there you are.

Law of Logical Argument Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brown's Law If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Oliver's Law A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Wilson's Law As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it. (This one is true every time!)

Doctors' Law If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better. Don't make an appointment and you'll stay sick. (This one is also true every time.)

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Managing your followers and friends on Twitter is not easy. But its a fact that your success ratio and influence power is directly proportional to how active your followers are. I’ve realized that rather than who follows you or how many people follow you, its important to know whom you are following and how active they are. Some of the factors that will determine your influence power on Twitter are- How active your followers are.

- Do they ReTweet your tweets.

- Whether they are regularly updated and have a good following.

- Are those whom you follow, following you back etc.

With the default options on Twitter, its not really easy to manage your followers, but here are some interesting web based applications that I found to be of great help. Hope you find them useful too.

1. Mass Unfollow those who are not following you back with Huitter

I believe that there is no use in following people who aren’t reciprocating on Twitter. I use this tool weekly, to check for people who aren’t following me back. It automatically unfollows everyone who aren’t following you back. Huitter.

2. Automatically unfollow all inactive accounts you are following with MyCleener

This is yet another tool that will help us automatically unfollow all the inactive accounts based on when their last tweet was, and help you save your follow number. MyCleener

3. Find out common users following and being followed by two accounts

This is a great tool, because if you knew two power user accounts, say from your niche, then you can find out who are the guys they keep in contact with and who are the guys they are following and followed by with this tool. Running this tool with maximum five accounts will more or less reveal the “hidden” circle among them. Very effective if you know whom to stalk. Who follows whom

4. Manage your friends and followers with tags

This tool lets you rate and tag your friends and filter them on a timeline! You can also create custom groups of your followers and filter you timeline by that group. Very effective, but a little complicated to use. Twittangle

5. Unfollow people who have not updated within “X” amount of days

This is one of the best ones out there. It lets you find out the tweeps out of your followers who have not updated within a specified number of days (you can decide how many days is it) and lets you unfollow them. Extremely helpful when it comes to keeping your followers group healthy. Untweeps

6. Find out which Tweet made you popular and which one un-popular

One of the things that’s frustrating about Twitter is the un availability of a tracking mechanism. I personally would like to know what was that one tweet that got me popular and which is the one tweet after which people unfollowed me. Very effective in finding out what people expect from you and what they don’t. This tool helps you find just that. Tweet Rank (it’s German, you may want to translate it to English.)

7. Find out your ReTweet Rank

ReTweets I believe are a good measure to find out how popular your tweets are. This site picks up all the re-tweeted stories and grades you based on the number of re-tweets. Though its not sure what the algorithm is, its a nice tool to find out where you stand. Retweetrank

8. Find out who’s following who on Twitter

Well basically this tool helps you to find out if those people you are following are following you back or not. Shows you the number of friends, fans and followers. But I use it for a different purpose. If I find out a power user in my niche who is popular and is often re-tweeted, I would like to find whom he is following and what are his sources. Simply use this tool, give in the username and it will show who all are following him, his friends and fans. The good thing is that you can sort them by the number of followers they have. So if you want to steal a power users “precious friends”, this tool comes in pretty handy. Friendorfollow

9. Find out common followers between accounts

If you’re unsure whether to follow someone or not, just use this tool to find out if you have common interests and whether there are guys you are following in common. TwtrFrnd

10. Find relevant and interesting Twitter users to follow

As I said earlier, a good twitter life is all about following and keeping in company with the most active and interesting Tweeps. And Mr.Tweet is one damn tool that lets you connect with them. I mean, its a very simple concept executed in an awesome way. It shows interesting profiles and stats such as they are active or not, responds to tweets or not and whether they’ll follow you back. Mr.Tweet

originally posted athttp://dvhacker.blogspot.com/2009/04/10-twitter-tools-to-effectively-manage.html

originally posted athttp://www.techradar.com/news/internet/10-easy-ways-to-boost-your-online-security-591191

Many people think that installing anti-virus, firewall and anti-spyware software should inoculate them from all manner of threats.

The truth is, you need to be a bit more savvy than that.

Read on to find out 10 really easy ways to close the security holes that still remain on your PC.

And if you're called upon to clean the junk off a friend or relative's PC this Easter break, you might want to share this link with them to save you getting called back out again in a week.

1. Augment your anti-virus tool

Threatfire is designed to work alongside existing security products. Unlike traditional anti-virus tools, it doesn't rely on signatures to identify malware; instead, it monitors your PC for suspicious malware-like behaviour. The only time you'll hear from the program is when it's found something suspicious; otherwise it'll sit silently in the background.

2. Switch to plain text mail

HTML can be used to hide all sorts of unpleasant things in email. Set your mail program to view all messages as plain text by default - you should see an option for viewing individual messages as HTML when you trust the sender.

3. Don't click mail links

Never visit web sites by clicking links in your email unless you're 100 per cent sure the link is safe. This is especially true for emails purporting to come from financial institutions asking you to log in to verify your account details - 99.9% are scams (the other 0.1% are irresponsible).

4. Vet your email

Most anti-spam tools only process email that's been downloaded from your mail server - install PopTray and you can check and preview your mail while it's still on the server, deleting unwanted and suspicious messages without exposing them to your mail program.

5. Switch web browser

Upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer or switch to a browser that doesn't support potentially malicious Active-X controls such as Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome. Check the browser's privacy and security settings are set to Medium High or greater.

6. Check web sites before you visit

Install the free Web of Trust plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox (Chrome will be supported once the browser supports third-party add-ons), and you'll be in a better position to avoid unsafe web sites thanks to its traffic-light system for both sites and search engine results.

7. Manage your passwords

A password manager such as KeePass enables you to securely and easily enter your passwords into any program. As you only need to remember one master password to use the program, there's no excuse to use the same password across all your online accounts (the program will even generate secure, random passwords for you).

8. Screen all downloads

Never open attachments or downloads directly - save the file to your hard drive, right-click it and run a quick scan with your security tool of choice prior to opening it. When downloading files, make sure you download from a reputable web site (typically the program's own home page or a respected download site) – the WOT plug-in will help here.

9. P2P basics

Peer-to-peer networks are a breeding ground for malicious software, particularly in content that's been copyrighted. If you can't live without P2P, pick a trusted provider and client (such as uTorrent). Be careful what you share, and scan all downloads prior to opening them.

10. Create a virtual sandbox

Sandboxie enables you to run any program in a protected and isolated space on your hard drive. Changes made are discarded when you close the sandbox, so you can surf the web and open mail attachments without fear of malware sneaking on to your PC.

Turns out life has more essential building blocks to play with than previously thought: researchers at Rockefeller University have discovered a new nucleotide in the mammalian DNA code. Remember good ol' adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine? Well, the alphabet of our DNA sequence is about to receive a new letter. Meet 5-hydroxymethylcytosine; we aren't sure what it does or where it's located, but we know it's important -- really important.

In the announcement, Nathaniel Heintz, director of the molecular biology lab that conducted the research, was exuberant about the significance of the finding: "This is another mechanism for regulation of gene expression and nuclear structure that no one has had any insight into. I think this finding will electrify the field of epigenetics."

Epigenetics, or the study of heritable traits that occur without changes in DNA sequence, pioneered the discovery of a fifth nucleotide, 5-methylcytosine (5-mC), and now it adds a sixth. Since genes alone cannot account for the stark differences among mammals -- all which share a sizeable amount of genetic material -- scientists believe the differentiation stems from a dynamic regulation of gene expression rather than the gene sequence alone. Which is why the discovery of a new nucleotide is so remarkable: it may prompt DNA demethylation, or help regulate gene expression.

Even more remarkable is that the discovery was an act of serendipity. According to Skirmantas Kriaucionis, a postdoctoral associate in the Heintz lab, "We didn't go looking for this modification. We just found it." Kriaucionis was investigating the levels of 5-methylcytosine in two different brain neurons (Purkinje cells and granule cells) and while analyzing the epigenetic makeup of these cells discovered a significant amount of an unknown nucleotide.

Kriaucionis performed several tests to determine the elemental composition of the unknown substance and all tests converged on one result: 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, a nucleotide previously found only in bacterial viruses, which he found "abundant in the mouse and human brain." The next step is to deduce the genetic location, role, and effects of the new nucleotide, believed to have a link to brain function.

originally posted onhttp://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-04/t-g-c-and-what